A shocking exposé by NC Policy Watch’s Sarah Ovaska shows just how egregious the lack of oversight can be when it comes to charter schools. The Quality Education Academy received $13.2 million in federal, state, and local taxpayer dollars over a four-year period to help subsidize the education of the charter’s basketball team–two-thirds of whom came from other states or countries.
“A Winston-Salem charter school has become an unlikely basketball powerhouse in recent years, winning three national high school championships and sending more than a dozen former players on to Division 1 colleges.
But the success of Quality Education Academy‘s boys basketball team rests on a strategy prohibited at most public schools—recruiting top players throughout the nation and world.
It also offers a window into the N.C. Department of Public Instruction’s struggles to hold charter schools accountable as the schools become a larger piece of the state’s public education system.”
